Actually, I do know what exponential means. Faster-than-exponential means the rate of growth increases as time progresses, e.g. e^(e^t). By "the overarching s

Actually, I do know what exponential means. Faster-than-exponential means the rate of growth increases as time progresses, e.g. e^(e^t). By "the overarching story is still faster-than-exponential", what I mean is that the rate of economic growth itself is growing-- taking the long (hundreds of years) view. In agrarian times, 0.1% per year was typical. By the 1700s, we were up to 0.3-0.5% per year. By 1825, 1% per year was typical. Now, global economic growth is about 4% per year. If we started out with a GDP 1% a year in 1950, and say GDP advanced .5% per year after that, we'd currently be experiencing 31% economic growth per year. It won't grow that fast. My guess is that the growth rate's own doubling rate is about once every 150 years or so (with noise) meaning we'll see 9-10% growth as the norm in the mid-22nd century. Obviously, there's some limit to this, but once humanity is post-scarcity (ca. 2120) who cares?